Scott Pruitt has resigned as Administrator of the EPA, and President Trump has accepted his resignation while praising his accomplishments. Pruitt has cut back or rescinded 22 unnecessary regulations at a savings of $1 billion. But the scandals, the scandals? What about all the scandals?

The EPA was an agency turned by the Obama administration into a weapon to put land use and our natural resources under administration control. The EPA agency had its origins in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, in 1962 she foresaw the death of wildlife in the use of pesticides, which she blamed for her cancer diagnosis. It was a passionate book and alarmed the world into the beginnings of an environmental movement. President Nixon proposed the establishment and it began in 1970, conducting environmental assessment, research and education and has the responsibility of maintaining and enforcing a variety of national standards. It delegates some permitting, monitoring and enforcement.

An offshore oil rig in California fouled beaches with millions of gallons of spilled oil. The Cuyahoga River near Cleveland burst into flames (which it did regularly). There was, of course, vast agreement that we needed to care about our environment. That, again of course, turned into a huge invitation for all those folks whose familiarity with the environment was limited to the nearest city park, to believe that all was in danger. Governments at all levels found it necessary and politically rewarding to favor conservation, prevention of pollution, and doing something about clean air and water.

Activists soon found it useful to find an endangered species on the very site where a project, a factory, a bridge, a highway, might be built to bring it to a halt. Add in former NASA scientist James Hansen and his “climate event of cosmic significance,” some 30 years ago, when he singlehandedly elevated climate change into a worldwide panic.

Universities have established new departments, funded with vast grants to investigate global warming. The United Nations has vast organizations, Every country, county and city have environmental departments, and the problem of global warming has consumed many a passionate adherent (see Tom Steyer) in spite of admissions by Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart who said “No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral benefits…Climate change (provides) the greatest change to bring about justice and equality in the world.” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change admitted at a news conference in Brussels in early February of 2015 that the goal of environmental activists was not to save the world from ecological calamity—but to destroy capitalism,

This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.

That explains a good deal of the passion of climate activists, and there are true believers who call us “deniers” or worse. Obama’s EPA was an agency using environmentalism as a tool to bring the natural resources of the United States under more direct federal control. Congress, in its innocence, had long ago authorized the EPA to monitor the navigable waters of America to prevent them from becoming polluted. The Waters of America became a tool to control everything that flowed from the downspouts of your house to every ditch and stream into something that could actually be defined as a “navigable” water. Enormous fines were levied on ranchers with a small stock pond, people building a cabin on a lake view lot, $30,000 $50,000, ending in a Supreme Court case. Huge scandal of a massive EPA caused spill from the Gold King Mine desecrating pristine wilderness, turned the Colorado River into a yellow sludge.

Scott Pruitt was doing a terrific job of getting the agency back on its correct path. The Left, intent on getting rid of him, started digging, looking for anything that could be turned into a scandal. Democrats have noticed that Republicans in government who are involved in a scandal are quickly booted out. Democrats have no such compunctions about their own people. This is a open invitation. With a win in getting rid of Scott Pruitt, Democrats are already turning on his replacement, his former deputy, Andrew Wheeler, who is expected to carry on reforming the EPA. It also appears that they will be going for Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior. A New York State University professor has suggested that Zinke stands for white people, Christianity, and his corporate overlords, favoring Americans on their potential to increase fuel consumption?

In his resignation statement, Pruitt said the attacks on his family were too much, but what threats or attacks have not been reported. As far as I can tell, nothing he supposedly did in office is unforgivable or bad or even notable. He was a victim of a sustained well-funded leftist assault aimed specifically at removing him from office. Andrew Wheeler can expect more of the same, as can Ryan Zinke. This is not cutesy Trump Derangement Syndrome. It is something far darker and far more evil.